Hrm, I dunno. I'd have a stronger opinion on it if I could more easily see how much damage the Finest Hour splash effect was worth. It seems like it would be a fair bit, but I haven't been able to really see the damage.

That said, I do tend to ignore the Gauss Gun in favor of other abilities.

Kol is good on its own, but when teamed withKodiak  HC's it can be near unstoppable

lets not forget flux field makes finest hour and the rail gun extra sweet.

Thats why you have more than 1.

That's a good point in itself, but there should always be some kind of upper limit to the boosting. Also, maybe a reduction in AM cost might be a better boost than just firepower. This would make Gauss Gun a better abillity at lower levels and makes the Kol the much needed alternative to the Marza in terms of combat power in the early/mid game. Right now, the Marza (and maybe the Akkan) is the only Cap worth cranking out first for TEC. And if you go with that, cranking out a Dunnov seems like a natural follow up, leaving the Kol usually as the 3rd cap to come out. This means that the Kol will mostly function as fly swatter and not much else. The Marza (and Dunnov) will be dishing out most of the damage anyway.

The problem seems to me, that the TEC have all the firepower in a single Cap (Marza, that is), so it's the only cap worth building early game. The Akkan might be fair game if its colony ability did not suck so much and Target Uplink gave you a boost that is more than situational. Maybe the Kol is not the biggest problem after all, you may be right about that. I just want to have some damn choices when it comes to TEC capitals!

I realise a lot of these changes could never happen in Core, given that 'what's written in the manual can't be changed', but my thoughts on the railgun is that it's the wrong ability. Thematically, I would actually fiddle the Marza and the Kol's abilities together.

- The Marza loses Radiation Bomb, gains a modified Railgun ability. Why? Because it's got a sodding great spinal mounted mass driver - it's used for Raze Planet, why not let it do something similar to ships?

- The Kol loses the Railgun, gains an AOE weapon - something like Radiation Bomb, although given it's straight-up-no-surprises, toe-to-toe combatant  style, probably a flat AOE explosion rather than a DoT ability - thematically, it makes as much sense as a Railgun for the Kol to be the TEC warship that carries high velocity nuclear warheads...

I'd also up the laser damage. Whether that's the totally-awesome-visuals laser beams, or the laser cannon (Which really does look like a waste of space half the time - both visually and DPS) is debatable, but  a moderate boost to one or the other would help bring it up to Marza levels of threat, at least tactically if not strategically - as it is, other than Flak Burst, why target it first? You've got a tough brick that can't actually attract hostile fire. Might wanna look into that.

A minor idea that amuses me, though I doubt it'd come about, could be swapping its laser cannons for an actual railgun - you know, like the Guass Turrets. While this would do slightly unusual things to its buff potential (+15% rate of fire and +12% range being the two buffs it'd get), this could nonetheless give it a little quirk of being 'different' (and justify the size of the turret it fires from). And who knows? A +12% range might let it get off 'parting shots' on fleeing opponents. *shrug* The thought amuses, but is far from essential.

... That's an interesting idea, actually. Also lets you get the most 'bang for your buck' on the weapon, given if it fires before shield mitigation is up too high, it deals more damage. And would justify the absurd AM cost, and make it a little more 'unique'.

I had meant making the laser cannons on the side of it into a guass gun (Just to help make the Kol a little bit 'different' in its armaments, as the TEC's first purpose-built battleship), but as far as 'minimalist' changes go,  it's not a bad idea at all. Bonus points there is that it's more likely to get into stock too, beacuse it doesn't 'conflict with the manual'.

Edit: Another thought is to make the 'armor peircing' ability 'shield peircing' - the railgun fires slowly, and can have its EM 'signature' tweaked each time. Accordingly, shields don't really get to mitigate it... meaning that it treats the shield mitigation as -X% for its impact. Thus meaning that a 'boring damage ability' could be useful at the start of a fight, and at the end as a finishing weapon, when the hostile ship is shrugging off most hostile fire.

Armor reduction is merely a +damage effect.

What made shield mitigation reduction interesting is it keeps the ability relevant against targets taking a lot of fire - and there's just something that seems so themeatically right about being able to use the thing as a 'finishing shot', yaknow?

Personally, I'd just trade it for an AoE weapon, but that's because it feels right for the dedicated battleship to be one of the few plugs the TEC have in their arsenal to deal with swarms...